- Joined
- Jul 21, 2004
- Messages
- 9,150
Re: GIA, or AGSL, which do you prefer for cut grading and wh
Technical differences have become almost entirely the realm of Internet sellers. A few jewelers will admit that there’s a difference within the range of GIA-x but decidedly few are prepared to explain what that difference is, much less provide a way of identifying what is the most excellent. GIA doesn’t teach it, and never has. Excellent is excellent.
At the risk of annoying the AGS management, I agree that they’re dropping the ball here. It’s their DUTY to support their member firms and I think they’re missing on this. The fact that it would benefit the lab too is just gravy. This is exactly the sort of thing that AGS members could and should be using to differentiate themselves. They’ll come around. Meanwhile the online vendors will continue to eat their lunch.
Online merchants are generally better at Google placement than the local stores. That’s no great surprise but it’s a problem at the stores. Some of these stores, say Jared or Ben Bridge, are very large outfits and you would think they would take this seriously and get pretty good at it. This too is an area where I’m a bit harsh on AGS. They are a society of literally thousands of high quality jewelry stores dedicated to customer education and to selling high quality goods responsibly. Mostly these are 'old school' sorts of stores and HTML isn't their first language. They own one of the most technically proficient and well regarded diamond labs in the world. Even so, a Google search for ‘Ideal Cut Diamond’, THEIR term, doesn’t land them in the top 5 pages and the technical education they present on the AGS site is, umm, weak.
Technical differences have become almost entirely the realm of Internet sellers. A few jewelers will admit that there’s a difference within the range of GIA-x but decidedly few are prepared to explain what that difference is, much less provide a way of identifying what is the most excellent. GIA doesn’t teach it, and never has. Excellent is excellent.
At the risk of annoying the AGS management, I agree that they’re dropping the ball here. It’s their DUTY to support their member firms and I think they’re missing on this. The fact that it would benefit the lab too is just gravy. This is exactly the sort of thing that AGS members could and should be using to differentiate themselves. They’ll come around. Meanwhile the online vendors will continue to eat their lunch.
Online merchants are generally better at Google placement than the local stores. That’s no great surprise but it’s a problem at the stores. Some of these stores, say Jared or Ben Bridge, are very large outfits and you would think they would take this seriously and get pretty good at it. This too is an area where I’m a bit harsh on AGS. They are a society of literally thousands of high quality jewelry stores dedicated to customer education and to selling high quality goods responsibly. Mostly these are 'old school' sorts of stores and HTML isn't their first language. They own one of the most technically proficient and well regarded diamond labs in the world. Even so, a Google search for ‘Ideal Cut Diamond’, THEIR term, doesn’t land them in the top 5 pages and the technical education they present on the AGS site is, umm, weak.